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Today we take the RR91+ journey to the land of the Dwarves, infested by the bloody Greenskins. We enter the realm of Mount Bloodhorn and Ekrund. In lore, Ekrund has already fallen; in WAR, Mythic has given Ekrund a second life! Despite the small size of these RvR lake, so much space is wasted in mountains and undeveloped portions of the map. For this reason it was very hard to choose locations to fight at, in particular the Greenskin storyline is terribly cramped in these zones and finding locations that were spread out was very difficult. Hopefully the result I produce spreads the fight out enough to not make the zone tight and cluttered. Read more…

Today I take the Doomflayer battle to the realm of the Dwarves and the Greenskins. These maps posed the same problem I had in the Badlands and Black Fire Pass – the majority of the T2 Dwarf storyline is in the Marsh of Madness while the majority of the Greenskin storyline is in Barak Varr. The solution was to place all 9 of the MoM BOs in the Dwarf storyline and have both the chapter hubs taken from the Dwarf Storyline, while in BV all of the BOs are taken from the Greenskin storyline. For the Marsh of Madness the Destruction T5 players would operate out of the standard warcamp, while in Barak Varr the Order players base of operations would be the Chapter 7 town. On to the locations! Can you find all the hidden SamuelJacksons? Read more…

Today we bring the fight to the Dwarf v Greenskin T3 zones – which are split up in a fashion that saddens me. All the cool locations in BFP (for Order) are in the Destro storyline and vice versa for the Greenskins. While other zones have 50/50 splits in terms of realm PvE storyline per map – for the Dwarves and Greenskins its messy. To complicate matters, all the BOs and Chapters hubs in the Badlands are Order and all the BOs and Chapter hubs in Black Fire Pass are Destro. One thing I wanted to mention that I forgot to say yesterday and was asked of me today was about low levels entering the zones to fight with the big kids (something we see in T4 often with people going into the RvR lakes as level 12s or whatever) – players in the T5 RvR lakes would only be flagged for RvR IF they met the minimum renown requirement (71 for Sov, 81 for DF, 91 for WF) otherwise they would just be normal guys killing mobs and would be unable to flag themselves, much like players in the respective tier. Additionally, players of the appropriate renown bracket (or above) would be flow instead to a chapter hub in the zone, not its warcamp (Chapter hubs under siege would be closed to flights in). For this particular pairing Order would have to use its WC in BFP since no Chapter hub is used, and Destro would use the Badlands WC since their chapter hub was not used in the Badlands.

One of my peeves with the Greenskin v. Dwarf T4 campaign is that Karaz-a-Karak is bypassed (by a lot) to hit KV even though it lays pretty much right in between TM and KV. The two zones I’ve added try to narrow this gap between TM and KV and bypass Karaz-a-Karak more so it makes sense to go so far to the north to hit Kadrin Valley (it never really will, but hey).

The northern-most of the two light blue dots is Mount Grimfang, formerly known as the Dwarven Hold of Mount Silverspear, which lay along the Silver Road connecting it to Karaz-a-Karak. Not only is this location strategically placed in the realm of the war against the Dwarves, but the map offers rich history and potentially great scenery. On one end you can have the fallen Hold of Mt. Silverspear – a vast network of dwarven chambers carved into a mountain, and on the other side the Dwarven defenses holding the Silver Road, a narrow pass snaking through the Worlds Edge Mountains. Not to mention beyond the Worlds Edge Mountains towards Mt. Silverspear are the desolate wastes of the east offering little protection from the elements.

My next location I’ve thrown around the area of the Iron Rock and Mad Dog Pass – an area heavily infested with greenskins and night goblins. The Iron Rock is a heavily defended greenskin fort while Mad Dog Pass use to be one of the main roads connecting the Dwarven realms to the eastern mines, but now it is just a vast network of night goblin tunnels. The Iron Rock has a lot of potential into becoming a large orc fortress a top a mountain adding some elevation variety to the battlefield, while the northern face of Mad Dog Pass (which is closer to Karaz-a-Karak) could have a stronger dwarf ranger presence, as the rangers lead a guerilla war against the night goblins.

Before I launch into another colorful map of ‘I wish I could go there’ locations, I wanted to quickly redirect you to Gaarawarr Gab’s Transcript of the Q&A a few nights ago. Personally I didn’t find anything helpful in it – a lot of questions about SMs, Zealots & RPs and a few about WEvWH and Mauraders. In terms of the hypothetical future we’ve gotten a definite no on the other cities. -insert sad face- Some curiosities thrown out as maybes – player housing, more crafting, and barber shops! Yay for more fluff =P

Anyway, onward to the matter on hand! Today I would like to explore the realm of the Dwarves and the treasures that be hidden there! Read more…

Before I start my regularly scheduled program first a redirection to fellow blogger Werit to his post on the new 6v6 Eternal Citadel scenario and the contest to find the hidden Skaven – with yet another skaven sighting on the horizon we continue to ponder their role in the future of War… there has yet to be any mention of another race to work with Order so here’s to hoping that Skaven wont be a third faction or an unplayable dungeon race.

Now onto the regular scheduled program! Yesterday we explored the mind numbing mapping done by the cartographers of the Empire. If I was a general of that faction I would certainly execute my cartographers. ‘I can see the spires of the Inevitable City from here… oh lets go back to Talabecland!’ If the Empire v. Chaos pairing is the example of an army in disarray, then the Dwarf v. Greenskin pairing raises the greatest question Warhammer will ever face: how do the dwarves with their short stubby legs walk so far, so fast, yet remain so fat? Here is today’s map with dots once again based on key locations –

For those not map savvy, this is located just below the Empire map from yesterday. Lets go tier by tier and ponder why dwarves are so fat if they walk so far…

Tier 1 – Ekrund and Mount Bloodhorn are both actually well placed on the map, the only pairing that makes sense! The only thing that catches my eye is that on the map provided (I don’t know the source) Ekrund is a fallen dwarf hold – while in Warhammer Online Ekrund is under siege, kept safe behind massive stone doors… for how long though? I guess the other dwarves gave up on them and thought them as lost when in fact they live! For those interested the hold of Ekrund is behind the Durak’s Gate PQ (the entire western half of the Ekrund map is where it would be… Oh how I wish I was a developer and could make an epic dungeon…)

Tier 2 – Marshes of Madness and Barak Varr comprise this tier and damn is that a walk! Did you know you have to pass through the Badlands to get to Barak Varr?? That’s tier 3 and you completely bypass it! And you think this distance is far… both factions have to do it twice! You walk into the other zone once to do one chapter and then walk allll the way back. I am insulted for all the dwarves out there. Not only that but just to the south west of MoM is where the Necropolis of Zandri is… I mean, shoot if dwarves can walk from MoM to Barak Varr then why the heck cant they just jump over the hills to the Land of the Dead?? Why do they need a zepplin to fly a quarter of the distance that they normally walk? Additionally, the dwarves have no interest in the Marshes of Madness in the lore… Mythic sent them there on a suicide mission to mine Oathgold. They’re mountain-folk, they don’t go into a zombie-infested swamp… however for the greenskins it does make sense. Lastly, t2 is the first tier where the dwarf rvr zones become split and a mess. I am convinced whoever did the design/mapping for this pairing was a WoW spy who wanted this game to fail. I think my biggest beef with t2 as an Order player is that the cool zone of the two is Barak Varr, but Order only has one chapter there and is sent back into purgatory. I want to defend Barak Varr damn it, not slug it in the swamps!

Tier 3 – The Badlands and Black Fire Pass rival the distances crossed in tier 2. The Badlands once again is a greenskin stronghold, with nothing of value for the dwarves – but if you read the storyline they are there to find the secret tunnel to Mount Gunbad to mine brightstone… take a look at the map. That is the damn longest tunnel in the world. It is paired with Black Fire Pass which is the pass into the Empire…. but to get there you have to pass Barak Varr. Again with this pairing Order spends all of its time in the Badlands while the cool zone is left to Destruction to play in. From the perspective of the Greenskins… why would you turn south to Black Crag after Black Fire Pass if you could go straight to Karaz-a-Karak?

Tier 4 – Our dwarf friends make the trek from the Badlands to Kadrin Valley, while the greenskin foe go from Black Fire Pass (which is within spitting distance of the dwarf capital) way back down south to Black Crag. As with Reikland and Altdorf, the Greenskins pass Karaz-a-Karak when attacking Kadrin Valley, and then turn way back south to hit the capital city. Now two things granted 1)the dwarf/greenskin capitals don’t exist anymore and 2)greenskins are idiots, this is still a rather mindless trek.

Now don’t get me wrong, I think the dwarf PvE storyline is the most well thought out and the one constructed with the most heart, but the geography is a mess. The RvR lakes are a mess. My hypothesis for why dwarves are so fat while walking so far – they are all in fact pregnant female dwarves who drink beer.